Two of Jersey City’s biggest cultural events – the 2012 Artists’ Studio Tour and the Golden Door International Film Festival – are taking place this weekend at various venues throughout the city.

The annual Artists’ Studio Tour is a free two-day self-guided walking tour of galleries, exhibitions, artists’ studios, and art in public spaces. Each year the tour, which is hosted and organized by the Jersey City Division of Cultural Affairs and the nonprofit organization Pro Arts, showcases the work of professional artists who live and create in Jersey City, but whose art may be unfamiliar to the larger community. While many sites along the tour route are located downtown, organizers emphasize there are several dynamic group shows this year in the Jersey City Heights, Greenville, and Bergen-Lafayette communities as well.

Three free shuttle buses are available from the Grove Street PATH Station to various stops along the tour route. The shuttles will be available and will operate during the Studio Tour hours of noon to 6 p.m.

Studio Tour weekend will conclude Sunday night, Oct. 14, with a “tour crawl” of restaurants along lower Newark Avenue. From 6 to 9 p.m. four restaurants – LITM, Barcade, Porto Lounge, and Made with Love – will have “tour specials” on their menus.

The tour crawl will set you back a few dollars, but all of the gallery shows included in the Artists’ Studio Tour are free and open to the public.

The Golden Door International Film Festival, now in its second year, is not part of the Artists’ Studio Tour, but this year overlapped with some of the tour schedule.

For those who missed the inaugural Golden Door International Film Festival last year, the fete featured 40 independent films from veteran and emerging filmmakers. The festival ran the gamut of independent filmmaking. There were film shorts and features; tragedies and comedies; documentaries and narratives; films shot half way around the world and right here in JC. This year’s festival includes 50 independent films, three seminars for professional filmmakers, and a day of screenings of movies made by student filmmakers.

Like the Studio Tour, the Golden Door Film Festival began last week, but has several events and movie screenings scheduled this Sunday, including a wrap-up party this evening at the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre at Journal Square and an awards ceremony, which will also be held at the Landmark Loew’s.

Tickets for individual screenings are $10.

A special pull-out of events was included in the Oct. 7 edition of the Jersey City Reporter. For more information, visit www.HudsonReporter.com, or the Golden Door web site at www.goldendoorfilmfestival.org or www.ProArtsJerseyCity.org. Both events are co-sponsored by the Hudson Reporter.